


Steel

by fluffywambler



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Family, Ficlet, Gen, Introspection, Nick Fury's fake death, Racism, Survival, warning: racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffywambler/pseuds/fluffywambler
Summary: The .22 Magnum Nick Fury's grandfather kept in his bag is a symbol.
Kudos: 2





	Steel

The .22 Magnum in his bag was silent, secret armor against all the eyes that saw John Fury as little more than a machine part, the white strangers in the elevator he operated who still called him "boy" when he was nearly sixty, anyone cruel or desperate who thought he might be prey. He showed it to very few people, but his grandson was one: stoic little Nick with his intense dark eyes studying everything and everyone, as if he strove to draw the whole world into his understanding.

It was a symbol to him of the steel he carried at his core. He could see that Nick carried that same steel.

And decades later, when Nick lay bleeding on the floor of his apartment, agony splitting apart his chest and spine and red-gray darkness closing slowly in on his vision, he remembered that Magnum and endured. He carried that Magnum in his heart. He had become that Magnum. He would lie hidden but be a concealed weapon and a source of strength - for Agent Hill, for Agent Romanoff, for Sam Wilson and Captain Rogers, for everyone who would protect the world. He told the fear, the pain, again and again: you cannot hurt me, you cannot kill me, I am metal and fire.

When the world took slow shape around him as he came out of his drugged sleep, vague impressions of hospital sheets and white walls, he thought he saw that Magnum on the nurse's cart, fluorescent light glinting off it. He held on to it like a life preserver, and though it faded away it lent its reality to everything around. It became the world, it became him.


End file.
